douglasgibsonliterarytalks

The First World War cost Canada over 60,000 dead and changed the country. Hugh MacLennan's first novel Barometer Rising (1942) dealt with the Halifax explosion of 1917. His later book Two Solitudes described the conscription crisis in Quebec.

The great novels of the decade were by Charles Gordon/Ralph Connor and sold in the millions.

In French, the most important book of the decade was Louis Hemon's Maria Chapdelaine.

Emile Nelligan is arguably Quebec's most talented and tragic poet. Lucy Maud Montgomery is the author of Canada's most perennially popular novel, Anne of Green Gables, which has brought millions of tourists to Prince Edward Island.

This decade includes the Indigenous writer Pauline Johnson and her Brantford schoolmate, Sarah Jeanette Duncan. Duncan was the first woman to write for the Globe and to become a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery before creating the Canadian classic novel,The Imperialist.

The decade of The Last Spike deals with Felicite Anger, who wrote as Laure Conan, the first great Quebecoise story teller, and a look at Louis Riel projects us forward to Margaret Laurence and her treatment of the Metis in The Diviners.

Canada's Storytellers 1870-1880

First episode in Canada's Greatest Storytellers 1867 to 2017